Jean Dodge

What Walter said about B+W and detail is very crucial. Watch MANHATTAN and see if you like that look, but also check out other "Retro" B+W films like YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN or THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE, or DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID, et al. If you see things in them you also like, it may be easier to accurately recreate those looks than from a film shot in 1942. But getting back to TPOTY, It's also a baseball movie, which is an activity that lends itself to wide lenses and deep focus. We tend to want to see the second baseman in focus behind the pitcher, for example in a medium shot of the guy on the mound, so we can tell if he is a base runner or a guy on the same team. And, whenever we see huge crowds, it's second unit footage shot in bright sunlight, etc. or even stock footage from newsreels. The cumulative effect of seeing all those f8, f16, f32 shots may influence your perception of the overall look, not to mention whatever collective TV baseball memories you carry around in your head that may be influencing your subconscious. Also, Super XX film and a new fine grain release print stock were both around post 1939. So called Fine Grain Release Positive was very slow, and sensitive only to the blue violet and ultra-violet light - so they used mercury arc lights as the print light. (You can read more about Super XX and the fine grain release print stock in the Carringer book on the making of Citizen Kane, another film that went for deep focus and tight grain, and was lit with a lot of firepower, face melting firepower.) But consider that at least some of this film may have been shot outdoors with Super XX, and wasn't recording the same spectrum of sunlight the way other earlier B+W films were. The live crowd scenes stand out in a film from 1942 - the height of the "do it all in the studio" era, and yet one needs to recall that the film makers were doing everything they could to integrate the stuff with the studio shots. Now, you are too young to remember but us "older" guys in our 40s still recall when Arc lights were used on set, carbon arc "brutes," and while 12k and 18k HMIs are great, there is nothing like carbon arc lighting... it was some amazing stuff. People lit with arc lights looked different than people lit with HMIs. It was even more of a pinpoint source, and the spectrum is different. If you go to a REAL movie theater (snark, snark) and see a film projected with the equipment that suited the era, ie, a carbon arc projector lamp the film will look more like it was intended to look, and your comparison to video may change a bit. It is also possible that the cinematographer may have selected a tighter shutter opening in the A camera, to help cut down on the amount of light coming in for bright sunlit scenes. I have no knowledge of this but it is a good way to keep action looking crisper, and to shoot at stops where your lenses perform best, as opposed to adding ND filters. Needless to say you like this look and say you are hoping to emulate it. But please define where you are looking at the POTY film, from what source and more importantly, what your intention is in recreating it - do you mean recreating it for "Straight to Blu-Ray?" or for 35mm release prints, of for 2K projection in an average small festival, etc? You may have some interesting options if you know you are never going to film-out. Again I am talking out of my hat but I wonder if some of this film was shot with cameras fitted with pellicle-based viewing, and if that partial mirror contributed to the look you are seeing. There are so many, many factors to consider, we've barely scratched the surface here. In the end, there are two answers you seek - one is how THEY did it in 1942, and the second is how YOU can do it in 2009, huh? These will be different answers, natch. The answer is, research and TEST TEST, TEST. Best of luck, and let us know what conclusions you come to.

Try Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee video store in the San Fernando Valley. If they don't have it, no one does. The writer/director of Canon City, Crane Wilbur had an amazingly prolific career - he acted on Broadway for years, appeared as the lead male in Perils of Pauline and dozens of films, then went on to write and direct dozens more features. What will be harder to find I'd imagine are all the Argentine films of John Alton. BORDER INCIDENT is possibly my favorite Alton film even though it's almost all day exteriors. (It's almost the same plot as T MEN, which everyone is still blown away by when they see it for the first time.) Outdoors, I love the way the director (Anthony Mann, of course) and Alton stage and block in such extreme depth. DEVIL'S DOORWAY is a western the the two men did a lot of outdoors work as well - it's one way to study other tendencies of this master cameraman.

Lisa Rinzler is someone I respect. She's won independent spirit awards, worked with Wim Wenders, won an emmy... Barbara Kopple's work on her early docs is as good as it gets - but serves to prove a point that women often have to "hire themselves" in order to work as much as they would like. Maryse Alberti gets my vote - she helped make VELVET GOLDMINE look like a big budget film (it wasn't) and she shoots great docs, too and recently shot THE WRESTLER. Mandy Walker's work on Australia certainly made a lot of people stand up and take notice. Ellen Kuras shot ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, SUMMER OF SAM and BLOW - all three vet challenging stories to tell and her work speaks for itself. And yes, it took me entirely too long to think of all these names, despite the fact that I've worked with two of them in the past.

As always, Mr. Mullen has the best info in his head and at his command. There's nothing I can add to what he wrote other than enthusiasm and anecdote but I love Toland's work too so I'll throw in what I can. The research library at FOX studios has all the visual research archived for Toland and John Ford's work with GRAPES OF WRATH - including original glossy prints of FSA field photographers like Dorthea Lange, Russell Lee, etc. slapped into rough binders, gathering dust. I had the pleasure of holding them in my hands once when researching for a Fox feature. Sadly, the studio sees departments such as this as "wasted storage space" when it comes budget time. None of this sort of material was kept very safe or preserved well despite the best efforts of underfunded librarians. I had a friend who worked in a mailroom years ago who had an INSANELY famous oil portrait from a certain Hitchcock film about fear of heights hanging on the wall in his Palms deficiency apartment, because his boss sent him to a storage room to "toss all that junk" to make room for a copier. (He later got it to a museum, I heard.) Shades of "Rosebud...." If you love Toland, be sure to see all his films you can find, too - and spell his name right. It's Gregg with three g's - they all stand for "great," and he deserves three or four more of them. LIFE AND DEATH OF A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA is an experimental short - is that on DVD, anyone? It's wild, and funny, too. Even supposedly minor pictures of his are filled with innovations and magic, and yes, no one has undertaken a full length critical biography, which is well-deserved. The best sources for interviews are all dead now, I'm afraid. Primary sources and anecdotes are all we have, but the movies themselves survive. The NEW YORKER piece is quite good but barely scratches the surface, and has to be written for laymen. Read Tag Gallagher's John Ford bio for some good stories - the chapter on LONG VOYAGE HOME I recall has a lot on Toland. The Carringer book on KANE is worth reading twice. IIRC, MAD LOVE and STAGECOACH, which Toland did not shoot but chose to screen with Welles as an illustration of "how to do it right" get a lot of consideration. If you screen those before you read the worthy Carringer book of course you will get more from it. Look around for TUGBOAT ANNIE, COME AND GET IT, and MAD LOVE for second-tier films where his work outshines the directors, in ways. From WUTHERING HEIGHTS and up, until the war got in the way, he made one flawless film after another, with the best directors. Don't forget THE OUTLAW, which was shot years before it was released. All of those major films should be on DVD - but see them in 35mm when you can! Also, watch as many as you can in chronological order to appreciate his innovation/ learning curve. Each is seemingly more assured than the previous. He never rested on what he knew. And on a last note, I heard once through an assistant that Toland's BNCR, number 002 or no. 003 (- I too am away from home and don't have my books handy - don't quote me on the serial number) somehow made it's way to England and was used for television work up into the late 1960s at least, maybe a bit later. Sadly, it was painted BBC blue and had a pellicle thrown into it, but one day this assistant, whose name I no longer recall - Teddy? - had the pleasure of re-introducing an "old friend" to Mercury Player Agnes Moorehead when she had a cameo on some silly thing like an episode of DOCTOR WHO. A sad reunion at best. I wonder what scrap yard or dentist's lobby the camera graces today?

Scout the route, too, heavily. If mile 3, 6 and 9 are the good vistas - be ready and already shooting from your correct angle. If mile 2. 4. and 6 are in the trees or against a steep rock face, etc be ready for that profile shot too, and already be shooting as he gets there. Transitions like coming out of a tunnel, rounding a bend to a vista, etc are only going to happen once with your star, so have a plan and someone to call out the next set-up/angle that you have rehearsed in advance - even if the rehearsal is without the insert car. For mile 1, 5, and 7 you can fish around for whatever you might grab with the zoom, but be ready to do those over with a stand-in. Three hours is a lot but only if you are ready, ready ready in advance. If you have to rebalance the jib or change a filter, etc even once you are going to have to speed up and outrace the rider, I guess - not so easy with a fast biker on a mountain road. That may or may not get you much of a lead on the downhill side! I've been situations like on a commercial train keeping a scheduled route and hoping to time a dramatic scene to upcoming vistas - what a exercise in near-futility - you can't even see out the front to know what is coming, and the "scout" is a "one-er" too! We ran video out both sides for timing purposes, got a good reference, timed the dialog, etc - it all worked out but it was hilarious watching the crew climb around two dollies blocking the aisles. We ate lunch sitting next to extras as the conductor shifted our one "owned" car to a roundhouse, flipped it 180 and sent us back on the return commercial route with the afternoon sun facing the same side of the car for matching. Oh yeah and the train pulled out on schedule so no running back to the camera truck for that thing you forgot! I'm sure you know this but try to be 100% ready finger on the trigger a full hour before start time. Good luck... and be VERY VERY careful. Even with police escort there is always the chance of a rouge 4x4 coming off a side road unseen, or deer, rockslides, etc. Expect the unexpected to happen. Trust your driver and jib operator and at the same time realize they are concentrating on pleasing the director. The first AD is your safety officer and should have a clear channel to pull the plug at a moment's notice. Only one voice gives him commands, ever. The driver should have someone riding shotgun, eyes on the road ahead at all times, not taking script notes. I've buried two colleagues who were killed in separate chopper crashes - this is where accidents happen, when suddenly there is more than one person "flying the plane." Google "John Landis" and the word "lower" if you want a cautionary tale. When I was a rental house tech I took return on an elemack dolly that had been crushed by a crane - cheap pot metal caused major injuries, narrowly avoiding a death, wrecking a camera, a swimming pool, and several careers. The people who checked it out disregarded the posted load rating and neglected to tell us they were going to put a crane on it. poop HAPPENS, and everyone is real, real sorry after.

FWIW that Panasonic G1 is about to be superseded by a model that nominally shoots 24p HD video, with manual controls for ISO and shutter speed. http://www.g1hd.net/ And no, I don't wanna talk about what this might mean.

Yeah, I'm severely underemployed in a lot of categories.... ha.

DPs are fired easily and replaced quickly, and often. They are still "below the line," ie, hired help. Christian Bale is an A list actor in an industry at a time when thespians in demand are driving the business and have a lot of power. So there are almost two separate and unequal discussions going on here. None of this makes being a jerk right, or okay or acceptable, or good form. But it does change your ability to do something about it when it gets out of hand. Prima Donna behavior is one subject of an upcoming film, Rick Linklater's ME AND ORSON WELLES. The spoiler free lesson of the film is, be careful who you stand up to, and how and when you do it. He who has the gold makes the rules, etc. But no one ever escapes a bad rep. Christian Bale is now internationally famous as a spoiled jerk. He'll have to live with that, and his money, for the rest of his life. Sexist-DP-who-shall-remain-nameless is a pretty common species on this planet. Your "Arriflex" answer was the right thing to say, on many levels and yeah it stinks but get used to hearing more of it. But don't suffer in silence. Your posting to this forum has raised awareness, and was called for. But yeah there are things you can do in the moment. A film set is like a military unit in ways, and there are channels to go through when one's superior is out of line, just like it isn't okay for foot soldiers to "follow orders" and perpetuate war crimes. If you feel oppressed or harassed or insulted, you were. Period. If you were the 2nd, tell the first at lunch or at the end of the day and let him or her weigh the implications. If you don't like what they do, THEN think about speaking to the first AD, or the production manager about how you felt oppressed, or abused, or insulted etc depending on the nature of this incident. The first AC in your case, had he or she been consulted should have given a word to the wise to the DP in confidence to say, "you know, my second was not happy about being asked about her sexual preferences; you might want to watch what you say in front of her. She's right, you know, it's none of your business. She does a good job and it's working out well with her, let's not cause problems just now." In theory, that saves face all around and should stop the harassment and educate the boorish DP. You might even get an apology. Or, you might get more penis jokes, and then it becomes time to tell the First that you appreciated their help but feel strongly that you have no choice but to speak to someone who can mitigate a situation you feel is wrong or illegal or both, even if it costs you your job. And make sure you are professional about it; but you might want to pick a day early in the week when it will be harder to find a quick replacement for you.... and you might also want to drop by the sound cart and pick up a wireless mic so you can get the harassment on tape, too. And approach the AD or PM with the thought that you simply want to know from them, who is older and wiser, etc (flatter them, basically) what the best course of action might be for you to ensure your SAFETY on set. Put it in terms like that. The whole polite but persistent approach. It's politics.... no surprise there. How you finesse the situation will very likely affect the outcome, not some notion of justice or reliance on the mercy of a high authority. But yeah, we all see where this is heading. No one takes you seriously, you have proof and witnesses but, you get fired anyway and develop a reputation as a man-hating, no sense of humor person in a minority group. So we're back at the beginning. We all saw the movie PATTON. George Patton famously slapped a shell-shocked soldier and called him a coward for not wanting to go back into combat, and his career suffered for it. But good generals were in short supply and so he was back in position after D-Day, chagrined but his sensitivity unchanged. Christian Bale will be cast again and people will most likely stay out of his sight lines. It's show biz, and yeah a bit like MAD MEN at times. But the upside is that the majority of people you will work with are college educated progressive minded professionals. As industries go, you are in a good one, filled with passionate, driven people who make assumptions that "we're all friends here, so I can tell Pollack jokes, right?" Be prepared to see a lot of extremes. Passionate artistic people with talent battle demons of all sorts, in all kinds of ways and we pay to see them do their best stuff and forgive a lot of shameful behavior too. But we don't forget. DPs are paid to do artistic work with craftsman's reliability. Actors are paid for their ability to hold an audience, ANY audience's attention on screen, and are like the fastest race horses bred - fragile at best, and notoriously hard to handle. But keep in mind you can't BE a great artist without a certain amount of ego to be in the mix, somewhere - artists are literally mocking the gods, and death, in a way, pretending at perfection and immortality for our enjoyment and edification. It's a tough row to hoe. I have seen good DPs smash their meters on the ground in frustration at clueless producers' demands, or unwarranted criticism from a director, and actors refuse to come out of trailers for misunderstandings, directors get fired by stars, drunkards and drug abusers and wife-beaters rise in the ranks and the grips take polaroids of their genitals to pass around. Probably all in the same week. And I have also seen respected actors stand up for what is right and just and use their power and position on set to defend the weak and champion the little guy. Or to get a cappucino. Ask the director about any of this and he or she will say, "who cares? Let's put the camera over here next!" You just never know. It's ain't dull, that's for sure. I watched an african american actor once remove a confederate flag bandana from a grip's head and throw it in the trash in front of the whole crew. Was that an abuse of power, a negation of someone's right to free speech? Or was it a wake up call for racial sensitivity? The truth is, it was just another day on the job. Grow a thick skin but not a blind eye to all this. Do good work and remain professional at all times and prove the exception to the rule. And stay sharp out there, it's a jungle.

My advice to anyone: Make it personal, a story no one else but you can tell, and it can only be told with film, and make it something you feel intense passion about so that no one can stop you no matter what. Then, don't take no for an answer, use your friends and family to help but rely on professionals and seek professional advice whenever possible. And lastly , trust your instincts because if you succeed without them you are a copycat or a phony and if you fail you will learn from your mistakes. As far as low budget, make sure your limitations and liabilities are somehow turned around into being your assets. If you have no money, that means you have no boss, no censor and no genre limitations. If you have no camera, that means you can animate. If you have no locations, write a story that takes place in one room but holds interest like MY DINNER WITH ANDRE. In other words, use artistic judo to figure out how to do the impossible by using imagination. Never give up, never surrender. If you are a good film maker the money won't matter, it just won't. Read everything you can get your hands on, but also educate your support group too. THINKING IN PICTURES by John Sayles is a book I gave my family to explain what it was that I did, it details the making of a (good) indie feature in layman's terms. I hate to seem downbeat, but you probably already know who is going to finance your picture. You are not going to meet them online, or thru a limited partnership offering or a tupperware party. Go with that. Department stores with a 30 day return policy is you camera dept, and credit cards are your corporate sponsorship. Seriously. Just don;t take no for an answer. Use everything it took to make your short and apply it to a better, longer script. See you on the beach in south france! (Or, write a great script that a bankable actor falls in love with, and is able to do in a short time slot between other projects and is willing to let you direct. Then raise money based on that by getting and agent and submitting to studios or raising private capital yourself.) Now you know. The rest should be easy huh?

Working as a carpenter, remodeling your own home is good distance training, too. With practice you can intuit the size of a floor rug, room, couch, tabletop etc. but experience measuring things in the real world teaches you to judge distances well. A dollar bill is six inches long... a piece of plywood is 4x8... a floor tile is 12 inches, etc. Parking spaces, theater seats, these things are standardized to a degree. How far is it from your Mr Coffee pot to your favorite breakfast chair? From your couch to your telly, or the front door? Shouldn't you know this already? "Get to know your rabbit," as the magicians always say. Whatever mind/eye training system you invent for yourself is usually the best system, since it's yours. But don't just go around guessing - measure it! As for practicing with cine lenses there is such a thing as practicing on an empty insert stage at the rental house, or in an owner/operator's living room, over a pizza and beer. It doesn't all happen on set. ANY method that puts you at ease is going to be a big help come crunch time. You just have to make it all second nature somehow. Why not play around - it can't hurt much, and it might help a lot. Print out a bunch of focus targets and make your girlfriend or kid sister wear them on her hat as she walks around the house! Get creative, but with that method you could have a civilian-friend look thru the eyepiece and trust their opinion of whether you are doing a good job or not, even if you are using your Pentax. A homemade "pogocam" ( a cheap monopod with a weight on bottom) with a camcorder on it is just as good as a steadycam and a panaflex for learning the basics - assuming you aren't afraid of looking like a fool, with a fake remote in your hand. A tuna fish can on a clipboard seems stupid, but if you had two friends who would "freeze" on command and let you run your steel tape, at least you would see for yourself if you had the knack or not. There is no wrong answer except "not trying." As for practicing by yourself (careful - it puts hair on your palms!) I've seen some pretty interesting footage on vimeo of people who use a camcorder in macro mode, duck taped to the viewfinder of an slr just to get a basic shallow focus look thru a fast 50mm. I suppose that would enable you to have a monitor to judge by - BARELY - but it might also train you to rely too heavily on on-board monitors to chimp in to the zone. Pull first, by eying the subject movement, then check the monitor. If you are wrong, start over, don't correct by looking at the monitor - VERY BAD HABIT to get into. It's not a fishing expedition! But in general, I'd put more faith in you and a tape measure - no camera - as the best practice. Let us know how it goes.... everyone likes movies in focus!

Setting a professional tone and getting into a good rhythm on set can help you when the time comes and you are WFO on a long lens action shot. Setting marks for actors on obvious and easy scenes can condition otherwise clueless thespians that you're making the movie happen, too. Don't slow down the work, don't get in the way and don't piss anyone off but having your second on hand to invisibly put down chalk marks, tape, etc most every time as the show begins can be a great habit to get into, so when you really do need the time it isn't like you've somehow jumped out from the front dolly seat and shut the production down to a crawl. Remember, almost everyone on set has no clue what your job entails, or what the f-stop is until right before you roll. To the casual observer you are simply doing the same routine for every shot. In a perfect world the routine of block, light, rehearse shoot allows you to do your real work at stage one. Don't hold your breath for that to happen, tho - but act "as if" and you will get ahead of the game when things start moving at panic speed. Experience is the key, and practice makes perfect but be crazy like a fox, too if you have to. It's a mind game at times. I've had moments where you can get a point across clearly to a stand-in, knowing that the lead actress is watching out of the corner of her eye, that have completely saved my bacon. Just a simple friendly question like, "oh, i noticed that on rehearsal Kate kind of pauses here naturally, don't you since the rug ends here? Then we don't need a mark for you at all, really... I'll just put this here for the dolly grip to see as we pass by..." You know what I mean. (Usually I keep my frickin' mouth clamped shut) Do your work but be a ninja about it. If there are natural marks like seashells scatted on a beach, feel free to set them up at zone distances BEFORE the rehearsal begins, or the on-set dresser gets back from craft service and the director gets used to the look. (Better yet, train your second to do it first, silently!) You will be surprised how often the director will end up saying, hey, stop right there next to that starfish and say your line. Then, smile like the cat that ate the canary and set your witness mark to exactly 20 feet!

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE won oscars.... CHE and KNOWING were shot on RED ONE. TV pilot season is going nearly all digital. Nikon just announced a 700 dollar camera that shoots 24p 720HD... The Canon d5 Mk2 is poised, (one firmware hack away) to replace the DVX cameras as the platform of choice for the no budget film... oh yeah and the economy is collapsing. Everywhere you look the pressure is on to do more with less, or smaller, or less proven gear and less help to wrangle it all with. Yes it is liberating on one hand but it is also frustrating that some people think that just because it weighs less it somehow assembles itself. Lighting gear is certainly less heavy these days but it still has to come off a truck, be powered up and focused, flagged and tweaked by a sentient being in order to look good. That makes it easier in theory yes, but it doesnt make the gear magic, or tougher or un-needed. It just saves the strain on a grip's back, and leads to more broken stuff, too a lot of the time. Now that trend moves to the camera dept... It's already happening, so get used to it. Professional focus pullers are going to be in demand and also under assault as more and more serious production tries to take advantage of so called 2K and 4K cameras, and platforms that use Nikon lenses, prosumer DSLR/DSMC type bodies to shoot HD video, etc etc. Let's not quibble over the specifics. I'm talking about the trends in general, and how this affects a working pro on a daily basis. Any predictions, tips or caveats? I can think of the speech I'm preparing in advance to tell the producer... and it has a lot of "you get what you pay for" advice in it. Yes, the equipment is being adapted, with third party equip co's like Red Rock and Zacuto stepping in to try and adapt pro film production tools to pro-sumer equipment but what are the results, opinion and war stories from the trenches? I've read excellent critiques of the RED ONE's struggles - but what about the trend to use even LESS combat tested gear? Do producers understand what pressure the lowly assistant is under these days? I may have a feature coming up where the director want to do quite a bit of work with the Canon D5 shooting nikon primes with 3rd party follow focus, to say nothing of the scary workflow on the back end that I'll be expected to consult on, for free. I have not fully tested the gear yet and wondered what those who are used to "the good stuff" are saying. I've worked plenty with odd gear and "obsolete" camera systems and home-made gizmos and I'm not complaining - I'm excited about what's possible I just dread the LMandD out of the box factor that comes with this territory. I liked what I heard someone at Arri say once - when he said the goal of an equipment developer was to make gear that still works perfectly after you leave it in the monkey cage at the zoo for a week. I doubt that is going to be the case for a lot of us in 2009.

I, too saw DAYS OF HEAVEN in 70mm once.... on the day it came out! So forgive me if I can't recall the aspect ratio. In the years since I've only seen it in 35mm 1:1.85. I do know it had a life-altering, profound impact on me at the time, and part of that had to be due to the HUGE screen it was shown on. But mostly it was just the excellent work by Terry and Nestor that made it so... I'm leaning towards saying it was hard matted - it would be criminal to crop the compositions of such a carefully composed film.

I haven't seen QUIET CITY yet, but the discussion going on in various circles regarding "mumblecore" is an interesting one just now. Many of the so called movement's originators feel the moment has already past, just as mainstream critics like David Denby and AO Scott finally bothered to take notice. I think there is a distinction to be made between "mumblecore," or as it was almost known as, "slackavettes," and regular DIY indie no budget feature film making, so let's be aware of what we're really discussing. I appreciate the way that these film makers are somewhat "re-inventing the wheel" for themselves and their friends, on the one hand and then on the other I get annoyed that they sometimes seem willfully ignorant of what came before. It's an argument that can be played both ways. (I like the fact that some of these film makers DON'T NEED or want David Denby's opinion and haven't waited around for Harvy Weinstein to ride up on a white horse to sweep them away to sundance and a three picture studio deal. But of course, now that this is actually HAPPENING, with Greta Gerwig hob-nobbing with Ben Stiller, and Scott Rudin paying others to write screeenplays etc what are we to think? But these are director/producer related questions outside the scope of this forum, aren't they? It's just that with a one-man-band, it's sometimes hard to critique the rhythm section alone, eh?) Over on the DIY front, The DVX generation of cameramen and women are about to be handed a better set of tools, with the Red and the Canon D5 mk2 type cameras on the verge of coming into full bloom aas affordable HD tools that can be processed on a laptop. Then we'll see a plethora of pretty images and faux perfume commercials made for next to nothing. I'm excited to see it, but sorting the wheat from the chaff is going to get a lot harder. Woe to the festival programmers! Still photographers making the switch to moving images are taking the lead in some regards at the moment. But perhaps this discussion needs its own thread... What are the lessons, if any for the professional cinematographer to glean from a movement such as mumblecore? Not to pick a fight, but some would say the shots you cite are simply proof that "even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while?' Just trying to liven up the discussion here -I don't have a strong opinion either way in truth. (There are only two kinds of films - good ones and bad ones.)

What's going almost unsaid here is the fact that these recent films that are making a splash with critics such as Wendy and Lucy and THE WRESTLER are super16mm but also "blown up" by going to a digital intermediate. What is the verdict on this? Both films are downbeat stories about poor people struggling, so perhaps they benefit from the "gritty" feel and intimate shooting style that 16mm lends itself to. Or, we could examine aspect ratio: Different stories, but both THE WRESTLER (s16) and THE ARGENTINE aka CHE pt1 are handheld 'scope ration. CHE was shot on Red with ananmorphic lenses - essentially one way to give the director/cameraman Soderberg the ability to create a "look" and use good 35mm glass - his alternative would have been to do what Alberti did, and crop a s16 neg and use the best Zeiss glass for that - the 16mm master primes. Instead he was able to use 35mm anamorphic lenses to give his hero a subtle lift, and the story an epic feel that also was tempered with the "man of the people" handheld look - a novel combination, especially when combined with the color/contrast treatment that was selected in post. (name another handheld jungle film that was widescreen!) I agree with Mr. Mullen in the thread on CHE when he said the look of THE ARGENTINE reminded him of National Geographic magazine photos shot on Kodachrome - you could also almost feel the slick paper making the blacks transform and shimmer - an artifact of the crushed blacks from the Red "4k" codec. The Wrestler, on the other hand had a classic cinema verite style - the sequence in the deli where Mickey R. is improvising dialog with real customers, and has an extended frustrating exchange with a picky customer (played by the director's mom, i think!) stands out almost too much from the rest of the drama, it's so "real." Proximity to the actors has a lot to do with that, which reminds me of another point: Someone mentioned surprise at the team's not having video playback, but this is nothing to be surprised about if you consider the director is a lot more invested in getting the best performances from a mercurial, always in the moment method and constantly searching actor like Rourke than he should be about obsessing over what's already in the can. A good actor's director engages as much as possible with the moment, and the performance as it is going down from take to take, and doesn't hide in video village when the real work is happening on set. M. Alberti is an amazing shooter and if you can't trust her to enter into the dance, who could you trust? (I've had the pleasure of working with her in close quarters before - she has killer instincts and the reflexes of a jungle cat, to use a cliche.) So Aranofsky stood where directors have stood for a century - right beside the camera, where he belongs. Soderberg operates for much the same reason, to be "in the scene" or at least as close as is possible. Not the only way to do it, but in my opinion a very effective one. The results speak for themselves. As for the spoilers regarding the outcome, I felt like I saw enough to draw my own conclusions... *****SPOILERS below******* * * * * * * * * No one came back, girl or daughter, and he either died, or wished he had, which is more realistic. Poor bastard was back signing autographs at the VFW hall next week and working as a dishwasher again some other place and living in his van. All he had was the ring, and he wanted nothing more than to go out in a blaze of tawdry glory, the end. BUt eh may or may not have gotten his wish. His heart was already "broken" once and yet he had to go on living. Why not another time?

" the first one was weird and cool in a Gondry style.The first was by Michel Gondry." I guess that's why! Micheal Lerner as STUDIO HEAD: "We're looking for that 'Barton Fink' feeling, and you, being barton fink must have it in spades!" :p I saw TOKYO tonight and enjoyed too - it's not great but parts of each third work quite well. The center story, directed by Leo Carax is indeed very cheap looking digital but it seemed to be intentional in places - there is an execution scene that mimics Sadaam Hussein's hanging and the almost cell-phone video quality helps sell that. The story is a sensationalized fairly tale, like a cross between an odd japanese news program and an old myth about a troll. Carax has not made a film in many years, it was interesting to see that he chose video to tell this story. I think he wanted to to play something like our collective memory of the O.J. Simpson trial - where we all feel like we "saw it happen" but in reality all we saw was a bunch of bad cable news reports of everything, and maybe a TV movie of the week or two. He actually does use cell-phone video at one point inside a TV reporter's segment we see that carries much of the story. Carax has been working for decades now, but slowly. His first film BOY MEETS GIRL was stylized black and white, almost a pop art confection, and his most well known film LES AMANTS DU PONT NEUF is famous for the giant set they built to recreate one of Paris' most famous bridges across the Seinne - an enormous set - some say it was the most expensive French film eve made. It too starred Denis Lavant and had a street level grit-meets-mythic quality to it, although with a very different feel. Even though it seemed the most sloppy and technically looked the worst of the three film, I felt it was the best film of the three and the cinematography served the tale effectively. If it had the look of CSI MIAMI it might have also been making a good commentary on the virtual reality of tv-world, but I doubt people would have understood the intention.

. "Incidently Ford was shooting those scenes with a B&H 50' cartridge camera." Actually it would be a daylight spool "filmo" - not a cartridge camera. 100 foot loads. There are photos of him holding the camera. Everyone of a certain age played with those in journalism or film school. Tough camera! But yeah, i doubt kodak did the optical work. The other good story from that "doc" (it's a propaganda film, and a great one) was that Ford found a clip of FDR's son on the deck of a ship somewhere. He carried it in his pocket for a week or so and then one day produced it, last minute and had editor Robert Parrish slip it in to the final cut just before the film was finished and shown to the president. FDR reportedly was watching but semi-bored until he saw HIS KID, and then watched the rest riveted to the edge of his wheelchair. Then he said, "I want every mother in America to see this film!" LOL. Smart director! Sorry to get so off topic. But 16mm is not dead!

It's a great question to ask - pop songs are aprox 3 and half minutes because 78rpm records lasted that long. Before the 1920s, dance bands played any given song for much longer as a habit - and so there were less songs heard in a given night, and fewer spaces on a single girl's "dance card." Ten inch disks were a fairly random convention partially based on the size of the "furniture" (ie, a phonograph cabinet) the manufacturers and salesmen were adding to people's parlors but the form stuck and clever songwriters and performers began crafting tighter lyric cycles to cram a narrative into less verses. Ballads and blues, novelty songs and story songs got better as a result of leaving out the weakest, most repetitious or derivative verses from traditional songs. Broadway took note. Original songs had to compete and stand out, and make a quick impact. Seven inch 45 rpms continued the trend post ww2. It wasn't until LP records, the later period Beatles & Dylan that anyone dared challenge the form and put out a six minute single. But let's talk movies: 90-120 minutes is also said to be close to the length of a cycle of REM sleep in a sleeping human. That's when we dream. REM sleep is about 20-25% of the average sleep cycle. So if we sleep for eight hours, and a quarter of that is in the REM sleep mode, that's exactly 120 minutes. I think it was the director Alex Cox who first pointed that out to me. Actually, no I heard it second hand from Chloe Webb, who played Nancy in SID AND NANCY. She heard it from him. In the great autobiography by Karl Brown, who worked for years as Billy Bitzer's assistant during the years that "two reelers" gave over to "six reelers," ie, shorts to features he has a great passage somewhere which I'll have to paraphrase, as I am traveling and my beloved copy is not handy. He describes leaving D.W. Griffith's studio late after a long day's work only to note that the master was still hard at work editing - which he did in the projection booth, running the results on a full sized screen - and Browne says he caught a glimpse of Griffith "trying to drive his dreams into a corner where he could capture them." (paraphrased from memory)

This may be somewhat obvious to some, but regarding the "autochrome" look of EVERLASTING MOMENTS, I wanted to add that this is one of the great things about Digital Intermediates from film, or digital color grading in general, the ability to mimic a color pallette and feel of representational processes that were never really available to film - such as giving a look that is based on color postcards that were printed using a lithography process for the psychological purpose of recalling a certain time period. Not too many people have seen BECKY SHARP, (early color feature film) but we've all seen old postcards. Mr. Mullen, you yourself mentioned that THE ARGENTINE reminded you of national geographic kodachrome pictures and I immediately thought not of kodachrome MOVIES I have seen but the look of the photos as reproduced on the pages of the mag. And it was a great description, it really seemed to nail the look. I'd bet he was right on the money in naming the visual influence, or at least one of the more prominent ones. Okay, more John Ford stories... John Ford had sets built to resemble Currier and Ives lithos for may of his period dramas and westerns. These were the often the first examples of mass reproduced "Art suitable for framing" that his audiences had displayed in their childhood homes - simple genre paintings of home and hearth scenes, much the way we think of Norman Rockwell paintings for baby boomers. It was a great way to influence an audience... combine the familiar look with the new medium.

Right, digital "blow-ups" that originate on 16 or super 16mm and then undergo color correction of some sort and all that... and end up as 35mm release prints. Excuse me if I was unclear - I'm making a distinction about digital blow-up as separate from straight photochemical/optical finishing of a 16-to-35 release print. The digital stage, in addition to allowing color correction et al to be done in an electronic environment, and the flexibility that allows, also eliminates A+B rolling, negative cutting where frames are lost, and other drawbacks to shooting 16mm, but of course still retains a "film look." (That's because it is film, yeah.... that's the ticket.) I have seen THE WRESTLER but did not realize I was looking at a s16 lensed picture - No wonder the "grittiness" seemed so appropriate! It was real grit, I suppose. Glad to hear such a prominent film maker has faith in the process. I'll have to go see it again now. Rumor has it that John Ford had difficulty with Kodak when he wanted to blow up 16mm footage he had shot from the Battle of Midway for his wartime doc of the same name. Kodak worried the quality would either not be up to snuff, or that it would convince Hollywood to abandon 35mm! Sorry to get off topic... but EVERLASTING MOMENTS is possibly an example of european thinking to the problem of what to do with shrinking budgets. Eric Rohmer has returned to shoot 16mm in 2007 after trying HDTV once a few years previous.

thank you kindly jason, I was tiring of talking to myself - I'm long winded and sometimes go off on tangents... jason wrote: "Good 35mm projection is tack sharp and shouldn't be fuzzy. (snip)... unless you saw it at a place like the Arclight I wouldn't be conjecturing about the Arrilaser or post path." I'll take that as a vote for registration as the culprit, but I know what you mean. "The projectionist gets final cut," as the joke goes. I've bullied my way into the booth for festival screenings of films I was attached to in various ways and seen all manner of "film wreckers," we all have probably. But I've also seen hard working projectionists who use everything from rubber bands, nose grease and micrometers to make it run as good as possible. In this case it was yes, a platter system at a run of the mill multiplex, of unknown quality but I've always stayed until the end to watch b+w crawl credits to try and judge registration issues as a habit - and even look behind the matte to check for jumpy frame lines - another good way to try and judge multiplex projectors where you don't have access to an intercom. What I saw wasn't just registration it seems like... it was a softness that was introduced as some sort of generational loss. I can see why cinematographers are starting to endorse 4K projection, however. Who wants a film wrecker in charge? Too bad about all those union jobs, however, and let's also stop and think what this might do to Kodak and Fuji's bottom line, when they no longer get to make all those release prints... remember, we've already lost Agfa.

Incredible cinematography... one of the best looking films of it's era, and that is saying a lot. I saw it with Peter Fonda in attendance and a show-quality restored print right before the DVD release. It looks of course, a dozen times better on the big screen. BTW, Hired Hand's writer Alan Sharp also wrote NIGHT MOVES, another great film film the era.

NOT IRIS PULLS - shutter angle adjustments... big difference. I was speaking not about iris pulls, which change the Depth of Field but of changing the opening of the spinning focal plane shutter angle in-shot, which is possible on Mitchell cameras and the Panavison cameras that were built from the same basic design... All Panaflex cameras can do this. What changes is exposure and the amount of motion blur, which is difficult to judge on static shots. If you begin a shot with a 50 degree shutter but float it open to a 200 degree shutter in the shot, you have two more full stops of exposure, without a change in the focal depth. Not that you would ever do one that radical... but it is possible. And yes, you have to deal with the slop factor in post as best as possible. With modern film stocks, you are usually better off leaving the iris and shutter alone and count on using the latitude of the film to keep a usable exposure. Especially if the idea is to show a cloud passing in the shot.... But iris pulls are common if you have a transition like a doorway to motivate. Our own eyes do the same thing, and people buy it as a convention.

Okay, I'll just talk to myself some more here... starting to get used to it. I learned a few more things from someone who works in post, who told me that "if the picture was color corrected using a Pogle, it wasn't done at 4K. And if the VFX were done on a Symphony Nitris, they weren't done at 4K or 2K, they were done at HD resolution (1920x1080) because that's all Symphony can handle (DS Nitris can go higher, but not Symphony).... there are very, very few DI's done at anything other than 2K, both for cost and practical reasons. And even in the rare cases of a 4K DI (usually done only for studio pictures, and only select ones at that), virtually all visual effects are done at 2K - once again, for practical reasons (like cost and turnaround requirements). So even for a large picture completed via a 4K DI, if it's got a big visual effects component - think Iron Man or Watchmen, for instance - every shot that has been touched by visual effects (and in these cases, it can easily be 75% of all the shots in the movie) is, by definition, 2K." So that seems to mean that what I saw in 35mm projection was recorded out from a 2K Digital Intermediate, with elements comprised from 35mm principal photography and some simple visual effects done at 1920x1080. Then a few nights later I saw a 4K projector screen a DCP (digital cinema package) that was almost assuredly a 2K file. I don't understand the tech involved, or if there is any interpretation or "up-res" process or oversampling type issues that make a 4K projection of a 2K file look better than a 2K projection of a 2K file. So in that regard I'm left to ponder why the digital version seemed acceptably sharp while the 35mm was frustratingly soft where it counted most - but the culprits could be narrowed down to: registration issues w 35mm projection other issues with the 35mm projector lens regarding lens performance, such as critical focus (focus seemed good however) or overall resolving power generational loss between an interpositive struck from a DI, then an internegative and then the release print I saw issues with the ARRIlaser introducing softness what else? ----------